Interesting piece:
‘It would be a mistake, however, to regard the developments in the Islamic world as a counter-globalization against the one originated in the West. Instead of rejecting globalization, the Islamic world is finding its own way of globalization.’
Demographically, there are more Muslims now than before. I still think it’s best to not allow the highest ideals guiding the U.S. economy, our foreign policy, and our domestic politics be the culturally relative approach, nor ‘the European way,’ which has invited Muslims in for employment reasons and left them in ghettoes, allowing the pot to simmer for a while.
There are many important differences between the U.S. and Europe, but this more liberal, post-Enlightenment secularist worldview is still a product of the West, has some public sentiment going for it here in the U.S., and has serious blind-spots. While another neo-con invasion Iraq isn’t necessarily our goal, and clearly has, and will likely have consequences, the United States has business interests, oil interests, strategic and security interests throughout the Middle East.
On a related note, here’s a further debate from Intelligence Squared with Ayan Hirsi Ali on one side, arguing that Islam is the problem (the same absolutism in Islam that will not tolerate questioning of its tenets, its many violent passages, and its unreformed worldview which has a prescription for pretty much all aspects of the culture and public square). A member of the opposing side suggests that Muslim alienation in British life, combined with a European influenced fascist inspired-Islamism is the problem, not Islam itself (yes, it’s colonialist Europe’s fault).
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Where are the people in Egypt, the plurality or majority of the population, with enough money, time, education and opportunity to support the institutions necessary to resist the actual political will of the large Islamist movement in the country? This was the same movement formerly repressed by the SCAF and the enormous, corrupt bureaucratic structure that wielded power partially with our aid. Where are the people who have enough political will and support who could also resist the more radical, transformative currents in the region?
Well, now the Islamists are in power, however democratically elected they are.
What’s reasonable to hope and which ideals will guide us going forward?
Related On This Site: Samuel Huntington worked against modernization theory, always going against the grain, and argued that a chasm between the West and Islam will be a primary source of post Cold-war conflict: Clash of Civilizations: From The Atlantic: Samuel Huntington’s Death And Life’s Work
His student, Francis Fukuyama and once neo-conservative (likely before working with the locals against Russians in Afghanistan and sometime after we invaded Iraq) charted his own course in The End Of History. From The American Interest Online: Francis Fukuyama On Samuel Huntington…he’s now taken that model of Hegelian statecraft home: Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest-’The Two Europes’
So, it wasn’t an Arab Spring, but there has been an erosion of the old rituals and control of the public square….more individualization that has affected the man on the Street, according to an Olivier Roy: Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’
From Abu Muqawama: ‘Mubarak And Me’…From Michael Totten: ‘The New Egyptian Underground’…Michael Totten At The American Interest: “A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood”
Francis Fukuyama At The American Interest Online: ‘Political Order in Egypt’
Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest: ‘Mubaraks, Mamelukes, Modernizers and Muslims’……James Kirchik At The American Interest: ‘Egyptian Liberals Against the Revolution’
